dick | N4BC

Repeater work

I made a couple of trips to the repeater site this weekend. The club’s repeater committee has been working on the VHF repeater, trying to get the new controller interfaced with the ancient Motorola repeater. We got the repeater and controller to the site and in setting it up found that the CTCSS decoder was not working. Further investigation revealed a wire to the PL board had come loose during the truck ride. An attempt at attaching the wire to its proper place produced a BIG spark and a blown 500ma fuse. (NOTE: turn off power before connecting wires!) The fuse was replaced, but still no PL action. Had a good input to the board, but no output. Looks like the board didn’t survive the ZAP!

Luckily, we had a spare. The next day we went back to the site and replaced the board, and that fixed the problem! The W4MT VHF repeater is back in full operation, and the backup repeater was switched off, just waiting for the next failure :-).

73 de Dick N4BC

Catchup

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Just a little over a year since I was on the air and more than six months since I posted here. There’ve just been so many other things demanding my time … life gets in the way.

Anyhow, I just received a QRP Labs QMX midrange (60-40-30-20-17-15 meter) transceiver kit in the mail, and am looking forward to building and operating portable with it. It’s a high performance, six-band CW and digital modes transceiver with CAT control and a built-in sound card. There is also a plan to add SSB capability in the near future by a firmware update. The hardware will support it.

I went down to our repeater site with several hams from the city EOC team to temporarily install a GMRS repeater for testing. The city is looking to reorganize (revitalize?) the CERT teams and use GMRS for communications. The CERT program has slowly drifted into disuse, but the new Emergency Operations Manager wants to start the program up again.

Next month, the annual Smart Smiles 5K, sponsored by the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Virginia Peninsula, takes place at the Mariners Museum. The course is different this year due to road and bridge construction issues. Several radio clubs get together and provide communications for this event every year. It’s a fun event, with participants of all ages and abilities participating.

73 de Dick N4BC

A Quick Update …

It’s been a while. Life gets in the way, doesn’t it?

Just to update a few statistics …

QRZ Logbook confirmation rate is 83.96%
LOTW confirmation rate is 75.85%
My Parks on the Air totals are 824 unique parks worked out of a total of 1259 POTA contacts.

Other than that, there’s not a lot to report. I’m still active, but at a reduced rate from the Pandemic times. I have good intentions, but as I said, life gets in the way!

73 de Dick N4BC

Bummer!

We had our monthly radio club meeting last night and it was reported that the 2023 Frostfest in Richmond was cancelled again. That’s the largest hamfest in Virginia, and has been cancelled for the past couple of years due to Covid.

The reason for this cancellation has nothing to do with disease, however. It’s alleged that there is some disagreement and strife in the sponsoring organization … RATS (Richmond Amateur Telecommunications Society). I tried accessing their website for more info, but I can’t connect to it.

Otherwise, I’ve been working a bunch of FT8 and FT4, along with some CW, during these past few weeks of sky-high A- and K-index numbers. My Parks on the Air numbers now total 705 unique parks hunted. I continue to concentrate on CW and digital for my POTA contacts … SSB just doesn’t float my boat anymore.

The weather has moderated here recently. We have days in the low to mid-80s (rather than the upper 90s with heat indices of 100+), but the evenings and early mornings are considerably cooler than last month, and I notice it’s darker when I leave for work in the mornings … I actually have to turn the headlights on 🙂 . Fall is just around the corner 😀 .

73 de Dick N4BC